Last year I started researching my genes in detail. This mostly entailed running my 23&Me data file through various genetic health reporting systems and researching the most interesting genes listed. One gene caught my eye because it was stated that it had an impact on pain sensitivity. I had been dealing with various levels of nerve pain on my left shoulder and arm which impacted sleep and other activities, so I decided to put some of my focus on this COMT gene.

COMT stands for Catechol-O-methyltransferase, which is an enzymatic process that breaks-down certain neurotransmitters. I have the gene for a slow COMT process. About 30% of the population likely have similar genes. The benefit of my version of this gene is it allows higher levels of dopamine to build up, leading to excellent concentration, creativity, pleasure, and drive in low stress situations. The bad aspect of my version of this gene is a lower tolerance for continuous stress and increased pain sensitivity. (There’s a lot more to any genetic discussion, as you may need to take multiple genes into account, but for this discussion let’s keep it simple.)

One nice thing about knowing your genetics is you can sometimes impact how these genes work using simple adjustments. The COMT gene is just such a gene. There are foods that are COMT inhibitors, meaning they slow down the process further. People with the fast version of the COMT gene can consume lots of these foods to slow down their enzymatic breakdown of neurotransmitters to help increase dopamine. People like me, with the slow version, can instead avoid COMT inhibiting foods to help speed up the process to help flush out adrenaline. I decided to try cutting COMT inhibitors to see what would happen. I was surprised by the results.Continue reading »

Ever since an illness back in 1993, I’ve had issues digesting milk. Not the normal issues people talk about that require a nearby bathroom, but these horrible headaches that would last two days. Pain relievers didn’t help these headaches, and they were incapacitating.

I eventually realized the headaches were triggered by milk and assumed it was some form of lactose intolerance. I mentioned my symptoms to my doctors, he shrugged it off without any tests or any answers. Instead I was told wasn’t possible to get headaches from drinking milk, so it wasn’t happening. I was getting the old I-don’t-know-what’s-up,-so-you-must-be-crazy trick. Yet every time I drain milk I got these headaches.

Back in the 1990’s — wow that is so long ago now! — I was able to take lactose enzymes and they would help. Eventually I had to move up from standard Lactaid pills to stronger health food enzyme pills. Eventually even those stopped working. By the early 2000s I was get these headaches after eating hamburger, chicken soup, chicken skin, or other fatty foods. Once again, when I mentioned it to the doctor they shrugged and ignored me. I tried talking to a gastroenterologist, who scoped me from top and bottom and also shrugged and sent me on my way.

I stayed away from many foods, crossing my fingers whenever I risked milk, hoping lactose pills would work. I mean, come on, you gotta have your ice cream every once in a while. Interestingly, I found that I could use enzyme pills without getting sick with some companies products, but not with others. For example, Oberweis ice cream was guaranteed to take me to Pain Town, but I never had any issues with TCBY frozen yogurt.

A few years ago I saw an advertisement for something called A2 Milk. It was advertised as normal milk only from cows that naturally provided only beta-A2 casein protein. Apparently most cow herds are a mix of cows, some producing beta-A1 casein, some beta-A2 casein. Apparently the beta-A2 casein is easier to digest for many people. If you have issues with milk, but never had a test for lactose intolerance, it’s possible you just can’t digest beta-A1 casein. With great hesitation, expecting to spend days incapacitated with a horrible headache, I bought and drank dome A2 Milk without taking any enzymes. Nothing. I was fine. I tried the 0% Milk, 2% Milk, Whole Milk and no problems what so ever!

After a while I noticed my digestion was improving now that I was avoiding other milk products. I was able to eat hamburger, chicken skin, and chicken stock again without any headaches. In fact, I haven’t had any form of headache in over a year now!

Turns out when you make yogurt the bacteria helps breakdown casein. This explained why I could tolerate TCBY frozen yogurt, but not Oberweis ice cream.

I decided to wait a good year to make sure this was real and would keep working. All is good. I drink and cook with A2 Milk at home, plus I switched to Enzymedica – Digest Spectrum enzymes that break down casein when I consume casein A1 dairy. I’ve also used their dairy only formula, Enzymedica – Lacto which was made just for dairy, including casein.

This new regimen has been working wonderfully. After decades of digestive issues and headaches from food, now no pain or discomfort. I’m eating foods I haven’t been able to consume in ages! I just wish the A2 Milk company would expand their product offerings. How about some whipping cream, ice cream, and cottage cheese? I ended up buying an ice cream maker.

A while back I worked with a group that decided to throw an event in the city of Detroit. This group was primarily run by white suburbanites. Their normal events only had a small amount of racial diversity in their ranks and attendees, but because the event was being held in Detroit proper they decided to make it a goal to reach out to more blacks, particularly people living in the city, to be both participants and attendees.

In many ways they were successful. A greater racial diversity was certainly present compared to the suburban events they’d thrown in the past. Yet how diversity was implemented felt so awkward to me. Not smooth. Not natural. In some ways, not respectful. I don’t claim to have all the answers concerning this topic, but I wanted to discuss the experience because I think it’s a valuable discussion, and quite frankly it bothered me.

When diversity was announced as a goal for the event, I took this to heart. Our event includes literature and art discussions, so when a black comic book convention taking place in downtown Detroit was pointed out, I let the organizing committee know I was attending and tried to get people to attend with me. No one else went. I brought fliers for our event. I took free publicity photos for their event. I talked with many people. It was a great time. I learned about the black comic book underground in in Detroit that has existed since the ’70s, and enjoyed an event filled with art and performances. I also managed to convince one of the organizers to come meet with us, and hopefully join our team.

It was all downhill from there. My daughter loves using the word “Awkward,” and that word seems so apropos to this discussion.

The head of our event assigned people she knew well to all the department head roles. These were people whom had done the job before. She knew they would guarantee the event ran smoothly. They were all white.

To make up for the whiteness of the department heads, a “Diversity Committee” was formed. From my observation, pretty much anyone that volunteered to help with the event and wasn’t white was assigned to the diversity committee to act as an advisor. This committee was headed up by a white person. The black event organizer I brought in was automatically assigned to this diversity committee.

Now, I had automatically assumed, based on her experience, the woman I brought in would at least run a discussion track or panel. Perhaps one about the black comic book underground, which I thought would have been a great talk. Another role she offered was to help bring in local black artists and writers, as she knew many. She confided in me that all of her suggestions were being quickly nixed. She felt that no one was interested in hearing what she had to say. I wasn’t in those meetings, so I don’t know how they went. I told her I’d try to fight on her behalf. One idea she had was to make the Friday night dance an Afro-Futurism dance with a DJ who lived and operated out of Detroit. I thought it a great idea. When I told the head of the event I liked the idea I was told that our attendees would never go to such a thing and it would be a failure. This left me confused. How do you know if you don’t try? Isn’t this exactly how you welcome diversity into a fairly segregated group? Allow people from the community to doing their own thing? I suspect it felt like too much of a wild card to the organizer, something too new for her own tastes, but that, to me, is the fun of bringing new people in.

Soon after this meeting a photo with all the event runners was posted on Facebook. A popular public figure called the event out for having no black faces in the photo even though the event was in Detroit. He was right, as the people we had on the diversity committee were not needed for the meeting that day, and only the department heads were in attendance. Making this a public declaration embarrassed the woman I’d been trying to get involved in the event. She felt embarrassed and insulted. She told me, “I refuse to be used as a token black woman for their photo ops!” This public shaming of the event caused her to finally just quit outright. If the objective of this social media shaming was to create a more diverse convention, well, no, it had the opposite effect.

So my analysis is conservative risk adverseness, along with some white savior complex, combined to chase talented people away. I know of multiple other people that refused to join for similar reasons.

In my opinion she never should have been made to feel this way. She was talented, hard working, and knowledgeable about culture in Detroit. While she was not familiar with how our events ran, as our event had been going on for decades and is rather locked in its thinking, I thought she was still a good fit for the event. An excellent candidate to run some programming and bring in talented locals who never attended before.

I quietly contacted the person that had made the big social media stink about all the white faces on the committee, explaining how it was scaring people off instead of bringing them in, and asked if they would instead encourage people to join and attend. I was told they were not a “recruiter of people of color,” they would certainly not help with such a thing, and I was told we should all be ashamed that we didn’t automatically just have more blacks working the event. Awkward.

As it turned out, the event did end up having an AfroFuturism dance on Friday. The DJ was a white guy with a steampunk setup. It was cool enough, and nothing against the DJ, but it seemed an awkward choice in relationship to diversity and the initial suggestion. The turnout was not very good, even with a Steampunk vibe. We’ll never know if a black DJ from Detroit would have done better or worse because it was deemed too risky. Awkward.

The event as a whole was still heralded for it’s diversity among my white friends. There was indeed an entire track of panels specifically about diversity. That’s where you saw black panelists. Other topics, not so much. This, I fear, was the result of assigning all non-whites to a diversity committee. Yes, we need to talk about diversity, but does it really need to be the only thing a black artist/writer is allowed to be seen talking about? Don’t talented professionals belong in all discussions? Every time I went to a non-diversity related discussion panel I kept looking up at the all white panelists while thinking about other people that should have also been participating, but they couldn’t, because they were already on the diversity discussion track. Am I the only one that finds this awkward?

I wondered about the days past when groups run only by men started to allow women to participate. Did they form “Women’s Committees” to advise the men who ran everything on what women would want to talk about and create special discussions just for those women, totally separate from all discussions the men had? These days doesn’t that sound rather awkward? I would hope it does, unless you are a member of a religion that does not allow men and women to mix in public. Now, if people want to segregate themselves for special discussions related to part of their identity that’s great, but having the people in charge make it happen is very different, and having almost no integrated discussions to me also just seemed forced and awkward.

Of course, I’m just a white suburbanite, and I’m sure there are people ready to argue with me that there was nothing wrong with this segregation, and that there was nothing “awkward” about it, and it was the appropriate way to run the event, but I personally think we could do better if we simply respected people for their talents. My viewpoint is likely flavored by my life experience. I went to multiple high schools, college, and have worked in areas that were highly mixed race. People just did their thing. Here’s where what I’m going to say is a “Duh” moment, which is my point. Black teachers didn’t only teach black studies. Black students didn’t only discuss diversity or black history at the exclusion of every other topic. Sure those topics were discussed, and should be discussed, but in the public schools and the university I attended I never saw people being assigned tasks solely based on their race, culture, sexual orientation, etc.. I get that this event was encouraging more diversity for the first time, and the people implementing this obviously couldn’t see how awkward what they were doing was to those new people being brought in. And I’m sure some people were ahppy to have been only on the diversity track, but that’s not the point either. While the event certainly was more diverse compared to their regular events, they definitely fixated on “diversity” as a topic rather than diversity as normality, and so to me it rang as forced and awkward.

And my point is upping diversity at an event that’s stuck in its ways doesn’t have to be awkward. If it doesn’t exist naturally at your event, just get out and search out talented people to work with. They likely won’t know you exist, so you need to put in effort. There is nothing awkward or offensive in doing so. I assure you great people are out there waiting to give their all. Just don’t label and file these people away. Welcome them as the talented people they are, dammit! Not as “the other”, but as friends and associates with something to add, who likely live nearby though cultural walls have oddly kept you apart. Those walls can be destroyed, just be careful about using the bricks to build new ones. Take risks on newcomers. Work side-by-side. Know their experience may be different. Appreciate it. Talk about diversity, but don’t force anyone’s role to be solely about their cultural differences when you could be celebrating what you have in common. Be respectful. There’s no need to make the whole experience awkward.

I’ve had debilitating pinched nerve pain in my neck for well over 6 months each time on two different occasions. Both times this happened I was taking a medication called Uloric to lower my uric acid levels. I went off this med for a while when I has having my digestive issues and realized there was no pinched nerve pain issues during that time. As soon as I went back on the medication I started having increased pain again. I decided to take a few years and do further self-testing before deciding there was a connection. Each time I started taking Uloric the pain would kick back in. Each time I went off Uloric the pain decreased. I’ve decided the evidence is clear enough that I personally should not be taking this medication.

Perhaps this is why, after multiple scans, doctors said they were not sure why I was in so much pain? Perhaps it was not a normal pinched nerve, but peripheral neuropathy being triggered or intensified by this prescription medication? Perhaps it’s taking a mild arthritis and making it feel like a full-on pinched nerve, or increasing inflammation in what should be a mildly aggravated area? There’s apparently no way to really find out what’s up using normal medical testing, so all I can do is wonder and note there is some sort of connection.

My current uric acid levels test around 8 mg/dl. While I’d prefer around 6 mg/dl, my values are low enough that it’s unlikely to trigger a gout attack. Anything 9 or above would be a bigger worry. Taking Uloric seems to guarantee eventually being crippled by pain for most of a year. Thus, I’ve decided to stay off Uloric for now.

There is another gout medication called Allopurinol, but the two times I tried that medication I had a non-stop headache until I stopped taking it.

I’ve also tried gout diets, drinking cherry juice, etc., but these didn’t help lower uric acid levels any further than they are now. Reduced sugar intake seems to be the most beneficial dietary change.

Research into gut bacteria is an interest of mine. I started occasionally reviewing the DNA of my own microbial boime over a year ago. I was curious if I’d be able to witness known research, or my own hypotheses, in action after dietary changes.

Last summer, after a simple diet change, I saw a very dramatic drop in bacteria diversity. At first I wondered if the DNA analysis was faulty, as the drop was huge, but later I read a study on emulsifiers and realized it was possible I was viewing the findings of this study.

Each color represents a different category of bacteria. The dramatic dip in the middle shows the variety of bacteria in my system being dramatically reduced.

To understand why I’m interested in this topic, I should mention that I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease over 20 years ago, but have been able to keep it in remission using diet. Cane sugar seems to trigger an autoimmune reaction, so I avoid it as best as I can. Beet sugar, the other common white sugar, does not trigger this reaction, and luckily I live near the heart of beet sugar production.

Until last month, I was still having continuous discomfort related to my pinched nerve of the previous year. Mostly neck and shoulder pain that was aggravated while lying down. Not as bad as it had been, just uncomfortable rather than unbearable. At night I’d constantly wake to shift to a more comfortable position. I couldn’t sleep on my right side at all. Swimming was keeping the stabbing pain at bay, but if I didn’t swim every few days the pain would start to return. During the day I sometimes had pain if I moved into the wrong position, like reached behind me to grab something without fully turning. Much of the discomfort is now gone, and it only required one hour of assistance.

Back when I was suffering from a nasty pinched nerve, I realized there were two issues that needed handling. The hospital only dealt with one, the vertebrae where the pinch originated, yet I discovered that I received more relief from muscle and fascia release than I did from spine stretching. The hospital used a machine to try and open the vertebrae, which included no muscle pressure. The hospital’s only muscle treatment was to assign the patient some light exercise to do at home. The exercises were not effective. The only thing that worked for me was hands on muscle work.

I assume muscle work is not part of standard therapy because it sounds like massage, and insurance doesn’t pay for massage. When properly done, proper muscle treatment is not what most people think of as a massage. Properly done muscle work either hurts or feels like pressure. No oils. No incense. No gentle sleep inducing touch. The greatest progress I made from the beginning to the end of my pinched nerve always came after a muscle work session. Once it was after a hospital worker broke treatment protocol, and later after I hired someone when the hospital refused to let me see that same therapist again. I’m fully convinced I could have saved months of physical therapy, and been more productive much sooner, if insurance and the medical system had included some skilled muscle work sessions.

I described my experience with my pinched nerve treatment in a prior post. Once the stabbing pain was gone I had assumed I’d steadily recover. After a year I was still having some discomfort, as I mentioned. So I finally decided to dished out more cash for another rolphing session. The person I’d hired the previous year was on maternity leave, so I searched around and found someone that had been properly trained and had experience. Rolphing is normally done as a 10 session progressive series, but because this injury and a flood last year had impacted my income, I requested a single session that only targeted the area where I was having issues.

The session lasted one hour. At one point the therapist said the muscles over my scapula were not laying over each other correctly and he would try to correct them. He worked all through my left side: shoulder, neck, back, chest, ribs, arm. After the muscle work, some of it quite painful, he gave me some stretches to do at home and some posture tips.

I immediately found I was able to stand up straighter without discomfort I’d been having. The next time I swam my arm moved more freely, with none of the “crunching” sensation I would sometimes feel. I could now go over a week without swimming without the pain returning, though I have been keeping the swimming habit up to keep healthy. I could now also sleep on either side without waking to shift due to pain.

So, if you’re in pain, perhaps try some muscle work. The type of therapist I looked for was not a massage therapist, but a structural integration therapist, or Rolpher.

It’s been a month now and it still feels much better.

*** UPDATE ***

It was not a permanent fix, as the pain did return after a while. It mostly bothers me at night while lying down, or when lifting heavy objects. So, yes, it helped a lot, but no, not a total cure. Better, but I’d like to see this totally fixed. May consider scheduling a muscle work session every six months to a year.

A while back our color laser printer became annoying. Every time I went to print something it refused to print. I ended up having to turn it off and on again. Without an off/on cycle it would just sit there in sleep mode.

I don’t print hard-copy nearly as often as I once did, so it didn’t drive me too crazy at first. I just anticipated the step when I needed to print something.

Eventually my wife and daughter started printing a lot more often for work/school projects. Having to keep running to the printer to restart it had become an annoyance for multiple people.

I never did like our Brother color printer. It leaked magenta toner and left streaks. Plus, it was expensive to use: one of those good deals on the hardware, but they get you big time on the supplies. When I realized I was going to have to spend hundreds of dollars on maintenance soon (drum was near the end of it’s life, plus toner running low) I decided to buy a simple black only laser. Plus, I figured something was wrong with the printer as far as waking from sleep, so maybe a new one would save me the hassle of having to constantly hit the power switch.

What surprised me was the new HP printer also didn’t wake from sleep. Something else was obviously going on here.

My first thought was it must be a networking issue. The only piece of gear between the computer and the printer was a network switch. An energy efficient network switch. And how do those switches save energy? They cut power on unused ports. You probably see where I’m going with this.

People all over the Internet are complaining because their printers will not wake from sleep. I found no solutions posted anywhere.

I decided to do some research on a similar topic. I found that people were having problems using wake-on-lan (WOL) with some green switches. WOL is a method of remotely waking a sleeping computer by sending it a WOL data packet. It appears some green switches would simply not send any data down a line with a sleeping device on the other end. Feature or bug? BUG! It broke the WOL standard. Luckily there’s a large enough hacker community that plays around with WOL for computers. That community debugged the WOL problem. My assumption was that if a computer wouldn’t receive a WOL packet while sleeping, a printer wouldn’t receive printout data while sleeping either.

I replaced the naughty trickster D-Link DGS-2208 with a business level HP ProCurve 1410-8G which was known to handle WOL correctly. The laser printers are back to printing instantly! No more running to the printer to power cycle them.

The new switch is still an energy saving switch. It’s just a properly engineered energy saving switch. So, before you buy a green wired network switch make sure it’s WOL compatible.

Pain takes over. It rules what you do during the day, keeps you from sleeping at night, and changes your day-to-day behavior. It tosses all your plans, replacing your to-do list with one line: “Stop the Pain!”

As you might guess from this seemingly over-the-top opening, 2013 was not one of my better years.

The first time I experienced pinched nerve pain was back in 2009. My primary doctor at the time insisted that pain pills and alternating hot and cold pads was all I needed. The pain pills did nothing to stop the pain, and there was no continuing relief from applying heat and cold. I was stuck in a chair with my arm raised over my head unable to move. I managed to do some activities on occasion by grimacing and just accepting pain as a fact of life. After suffering for a few months, out of desperation, I started seeking alternative treatment plans. These included seeing a chiropractor and various forms of traction. The pain lasted about six months total the first time. I slowly found relief after traction, and figured I had my future cure should it ever kick in again. This was not to be the case.

Back in 2009 I realized the pinched nerve started up after having joined a gym. I decided weight lifting was probably not the best form of exercise for me. Luckily, the gym moved and required everyone to rejoin. I didn’t. All was fine pinch-nerve-wise for a few years until I did a charity photo shoot for which I lugged a bunch of heavy lighting equipment to and from a hotel. It was a bad move: I’d gone from months of inactivity to heavy lifting in the middle of the winter and the pinched nerve pain was back again.

When the pinched nerve struck this second time (insert dramatic music here) two weeks into 2013, I decided I would make the medical system work for me this time. I had changed doctors since the first time. I liked the new guy. I had high hopes for a quicker recovery. Many months later I decided this obedience had been a bad idea. Under standard medical care I made little progress.

As of today I am totally pain free. I’m convinced I would not have been had I relied on standard medical treatment. Instead, I would have been begging for surgery, and based on talking to others, it was likely that surgery would have been a failure. My positive outcomes all came from listening to what the medical expert said, some chance meetings, and figuring out different therapies than what the hospital was offering. The huge leaps in progress I experienced took place when I left their protocols and followed my own intellect.

I offer this as my observations dealing with my pinched nerve, explaining what did and didn’t work for me, just in case it’s of interest to others.

Last year I reported on how ingesting sugar alcohols, which are artificial sweeteners sold in stores and found in many low-glucose processed foods (the ones that end in -ol, like sorbitol, Erythritol, mannitol, xylitol, etc.), can cause health problems. Many people have intolerance issues with indigestible sugars, including myself.

At the time I noted the ability to digest lactose would fall into the same category since for many people lactose is an indigestible sugar, at least to some degree. Now that I’ve avoided all sugar alcohols this year, I appear to be experiencing this link to lactose intolerance in action. I’m back to being able to eat dairy without worrying about major headaches.Continue reading »

I made my first door-desk when I was a teenager. I still use one today. I have no desire to get a “REAL” desk, because what could be better than a door? They’re big. They’re sturdy. There’s no worrying about damaging expensive furniture, because it’s just a damn door. I’ve attached all kinds of things on my desk with screws, glue, and clamps. The door top of my desk is decades old now, but because doors are constructed to be slammed and kicked the surface still looks like new.

One secret to making a door desk is to use a solid core door. That makes it heavy and solid. You can screw anything into it and it stays in place. My own desk was stained with a cherry stain on top and black stain on the side. It was the 1980s, after all. I might give it a more natural look these days. The underside doesn’t need any special treatment, so it’s bare. I coated it with a satin polyurethane so it looks like nice furniture and has a waterproof surface. Door desks should be projects of their own, and boy do I have a lot of things attached to mine.Continue reading »